Gone Home: We Met Someday (Epilogue)
by Chadd3
Summary: "Some day, Sam." Mid-summer 2015, Katie saw a familiar face on the streets of New York.


**Gone Home:** We met someday

Gosh…, I can still remember that night, even though it's been more than almost 20 years since I got home from Europe and set foot on the porch. When I arrived from the airport and had to run the last bit before safely covering from the wall of rain under the porch roof, the only thing on my mind was to slide down in a hot bath and then fall asleep in my own bed. A year goes by awfully fast when you think about it and it felt nice to finally meet my family again. In a way, it was the most terrifying and at the same time saddest night in my life. The only thing waiting for me was the house that we moved into shortly before I went on the trip, and therefore barely knew.

Nothing except it, and apart from the note on the front door from Sam, nothing was as it should have been. It felt somewhat awkward to walk through the house that I about a year earlier so eagerly, but also with a slight scare explored. Back then most of the furniture was still in boxes or temporarily placed. But when I got home, a lot more had, what I had to assume, been put into its righteous place. Not only a house which I hardly could call my home considering how much time I'd spent in it but no trace of my family. As I uncovered what everyone had been up to while I was away through things to which a heap of memories and emotions were attached, the realization slowly became clearer and clearer.

After reading Sam's "Letters to Katie" in the attic, I brought the book down to her old room and sat on the bed. The more I red and while thinking about everything I had found in the last hour, the more I realized how much Sam had grown. Looking at the stuff in her room, the TV, the posters on the door to the closet…, and the forgotten things inside it didn't fit the picture of my sister as I remembered her. I slept in Sam's bed that night and when mum and dad came home from their honeymoon the morning after, I just started crying. Hugged them and cried. Told them about Sam's decision to run away with Lonnie and how much I had missed them all. I understood why Sam ran away, no one can handle too much denial and neglect when it comes to love and sooner or later they make some sort of stand. Sam chose to run away with her girlfriend and to cut and drop contact with our parents. Such a brave thing to do that only strengthened the fact that she was now a young woman rather than just a teenager. She had made the right thing (even though mum and dad, especially dad, though different) but I couldn't help grieving.

The following summer, the really warm one in 1996, I moved to New York and started working as a waitress at a neighborhood diner. After studying some random society managing course at college which turned out to be a disaster, I suddenly got the idea to move out. The house had, since the only memories consisted of the ones of Sam running away (and those before the trip just being fragments) become too much of a depressive place and I figured it was about to bring me down totally if I stayed. So I moved. To the Big Apple. I didn't expect it to turn out as it does in every movie made like Safe Haven or Rock Of Ages, but my only expectation was to find a new place in which to start over. A clean, unwritten page in my book of life. Now this, this is what happened on that sunny afternoon when I had just gone of my shift. At first I didn't believe it.

There I was on the sidewalk minding my own business, when I saw her on the other side across the street. For a minute I just stood there and took it all in. My sister, who had been completely invisible for the last 21 years, now walked less than the length of two lanes from her sister, and most likely not aware of me watching her. The street was crawling with life which I used to make my way across the taxi infested road so I rounded myself up and continued to walk behind her. Getting closer by every step I suddenly realized that I where about to meet, no…, surprise, a person who without doubt had missed me more than I had missed her. What was I going to say? "Hi Sam, long time."? Truth to be told I didn't know and before I came up with something better I was walking behind her. I could tell it was her, the same page haircut that she had when we were kids, and to judge from the jacket – the same style. If you were to categorize her as of now it would be as a hipster. I opened my mouth still not knowing what to say, and said.

"Someday, Sam."

She froze just like you do when someone has just scared you close to death, or you think you've seen a ghost. Slowly she turned around and as soon as I saw her eyes I could say for sure that I truly had scared her.

"Katie?", she asked carefully as she inspected me.

"Yeap, it's me Sam.", I answered.

"It can't be…"

"Can't it?"

I reached for my handbag and pulled out a worn, a thousand times folded book. When she saw it tears went up to her eyes. Without saying a word she hugged me and didn't let go. A hug that somehow compensated for the loss of hugs during 20 years time.

"I've missed you so much.", she hurled while her head rested on my shoulder.

"Me too Sam, me too."

"A coffee?", I asked.

"A coffee.", she answered.

Together and still half freaked out over the fact that we had finally met again, we started looking for a coffee shop. Of course, this being NY it wasn't that hard to find one. What was hard on the other side, was to find one that didn't contain hipsters.

Once in and sipping from the plastic cups that clearly stated hot content, I started to ask questions.

"You sure are good at hiding from the world."

I felt like starting easy and put on a little smile to ease up a potential misunderstanding.

"Well, I wanted to get away, from our folks you know. Mum and dad always picking on me and didn't respect my choices. It's just a phase, and that I hadn't found the right boy yet, you know."  
"I tried to find you but as I said, you're pretty good at keeping away."

"I tried to find you too, but I didn't know where you went, if you moved out or what you did. I'd rather not visit the house and risk meeting mum or dad."

"There are other ways of reconnecting Sam, different from when we were kids pagers aren't what's hot anymore. Cells and Facebook is the new black.", I laughed and took a sip of my black coffee.

"Continuing on Facebook, I've tried to find you there as well, but no result."

Sam shut her mouth and looked at me with pale, empty eyes.

"Well, it has to do with Lonnie."

"What about her? Please forgive me if I scratched old wounds.", I said and surprised myself over the choice of words.

"No, no. You didn't.", she said while waving her hand innocently in the air.

"It's just that… She's in the army now and therefore I can't say too much or do too much on those kinds of sites."

She said it in a way in which it seemed dirty. Like she meant porn sites instead of social networks.

"It's Just…, I rather not talk about it."

I remember when we used to play at the old house, and when Sam used to tell me something that concerned her or made her sad. This was exactly how those moments started.

"She's doing really good. She makes a difference."

Sam smiled.

"Katie, Lonnie's away. On some kind of peacekeeping mission. She left two months ago."

The smile slowly transformed to crying. Silently the tears fell down her cheeks.

"Katie…", she took my hands. "I miss mum and dad."

I once again brought out the worn and torn scriptpad that I'd been keeping for the last two decades, and put it on the coffee stained table between us.

The sticker on the front still read: "Letters to Katie."

"Sam, what do you say? You and I together - Why don't we go home again?"


End file.
